


Take the Magic, Sell the Light

by Humanities_Handbag



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Angst, Dark Forest, Don't worry there will be love, F/M, Forced Partners, Guilt, Light Fields, Lot's of angst, Love, Love in place of hate, Remorse, Saddness, Slow Burn Romance, Violence, angst up the wazoo, black market, happy endings!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5175893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Humanities_Handbag/pseuds/Humanities_Handbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Princess, a King, and a Black Market beneath them both. Fairies are merely things to be sold and bought and Goblins are what control the winning hand. And then a sister is taken. And another is captured. And a world is turned on its head. </p><p>“Give yerself in,” he’ll say with a smile, holding a hand through the air as if waiting for the gods themselves to take it. “Let them take you and she’ll go free.”</p><p>“You promise?” A Fairy will question.</p><p>A Goblin will merely leer back. “Oh darling. How could I lie? You know I despise chaos.”</p><p>“And yet you seem to be in the center of it.”</p><p>“Or perhaps that’s merely you, my dear,” and he’d eye her wings with a lust meant for a hunger never to be sated. “Perhaps it’s merely you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_There once was a story._

_Well, truly it was less of a story, and more of a something-far-different. Stories, you see, have beginnings and endings and that middle bit that everyone despises because all it really does is stop from being the beginning and keep us from the ending. Myself? I've always been a person to skim pages. I'd flip and peruse and watch as colored pictures flew by between the bindings, heard the crinkle of fallen papers, seen and smelled the must of forgotten tales that the cruellest of librarians stuffed far behind in the shelves that did nothing more for this world than to collect its dust._

_I've been to the back of that place. Where the books meet Beyond and the pages forget their numbers. And I've picked up stories and blew off the dust and cared for them, creasing back yellowed pages and hoped that light, fingertip kisses would solve any wrinkle against its weary spine._

_And then I stopped caring for it. And I skipped to the end._

_For that, you see, is my favorite bit._

_When the Princess meets her love and the chorus sings and the angels let out a joyous hurrah and everything is good and happy and fine. And everyone is okay. And the readers are glad for it all, and they can put down the book and sigh and press it back into its dark place where it will sleep for another hundred years, or quite possibly only a few minutes before the next careful, interested hands stroke down gilded engravings and peel apart its body to glance at the ribs beneath and hope upon hopes to find their heart somewhere there as well. And everything is well and good and done._

  _And if you're you (and I suppose that to be you you must first very much so be the youest of you's) you've followed me down the corridors into the libraries and took the book from my hands and hoped with me that the one you're to hold is one with a happy ending. Because wouldn't that be nice. Wouldn't that just be nice..._

_But on this day of all day's, I didn't pick up a story. I picked up a something-far-different. And that isn't much of a tale as much as it is a place and a time and a hate and a love and a lot of other awful things that we aren't ever truly prepared for. The ones that look too far into us and peel back layers. The ones that tell us that there's good things come. Except they don't come to those who wait._

_They come to those who fight._

_To those who conquer._

_To those who get up time and time again after their knees are scraped and their hands are sore from splinters and they've reread their tragedies enough times to see stars. They've watched constellations grow into cats cradles and they've carried their spare parts back in their hands like water from a well, drip-drip-dripping into breadcrumbs to lead them back home._

_Good things come to those who are willing to keep going._

_And love...?_

_Love comes to those who can feel the guilt of past sorrows and wish upon all their wishes that there's a chance._

  _Love is for the good._

_And love is for the not so good._

_And love is also for the enamies who stretch out their hands and promise to try... Who have done enough to crumble their worlds and have seen others fall along with them. Who want nothing more than for it to all stop but know not of the want that plagues them._

_Love happens, reader. Love does happen._

_But first comes the tragedy and the remorse and the adventures of a young Princess and a monster that lives beneath beds and calls himself a King and a society run by ones who think themselves Gods and the wings that make it so._

_You've followed me here to the back of the library where the books here aren't stories and the tales told are forgotten and the whispers of patrons are cast away at sea. Where the lights flicker a gracious hymn and the dust settles enough times so if you dragged your fingers you could write your name and mark this place Yours and be its ruler for all time and time again. You've followed me and you've taken the book that isn't a book, but is a something-far-different. Which means that it doesn't have much of an anything but it does have a middle and you can't skip forward to get the happy ending you crave most of all._

_I despise this story, friend, because I rather like my happy endings. And this has such one that doesn't appear until you drag your way towards it and pick up a sword and slash and stab and defend._

_I know that if you go down a few isles past the woman who wears her glasses upon the tip of her proud nose and hushes at children who read books about bugs in the corner ever Saturday you can find another book. A lovely book. A book that is a book that you can flip and skip and see the ending. And I promise you that it's satisfying and perfect, and everything is good and well and nice. And you don't have to worry about Black Markets and men with greedy eyes and tears and fright and love born out of capture and promises as foul as they are fateful._

_If you stay here you'll have to fight with me._

_Do you want to stay?_

_I suppose I do as well._

_Very well then. Let's get started._

And with that, we flipped open to the first page and looked on together at the old print, bathed in the terrible light of a flickering nostalgia, listening to the wind beat at the doors and the silence that was too still and the promises that weren't to be kept because in this world there were no promises. Only hope and blindness and fear of what was to come. And it all started, as most _so_ _mething-far-different's_ tend to, with a poem. Because poems rhymed and rhymes are neat and precise and free of chaos. 

And after this, we find, nothing else much rhymes ever again. 

"Are you ready?" I ask.

And you say, "no."

And that is the right answer for me to begin. 

* * *

 

**T** **rade the magic**  
**Sell the light**  
**The monster said with glee.**  
**For if you are as brave as they say**  
**You’ll give your soul to me.**

 **Take the music**  
**Steal the laughter**  
**Said the warrior, weapon drawn.**  
**For I have fought**  
**A million nightmares**  
**To see a rising dawn.**

 


	2. Her Name Was Linnea, Was Linnea, Was Linnea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it's dark enough to forget your own name: The Fairies of the Black Market and the Goblins that choose them.

All she could hear was the rush of blood in her ears, her pitched breaths occupying the space, suffocating her even as she breathed, and the telltale drip drip drip of water from somewhere above traveling below to hit against the tops of cages. There had been so much more than that before- whines and screams and moans. But for now the world had gone strangely silent.

She sniffled, shifting back against the bars, her spine pushing against steel. The bruises complained but she soothed them with a few ragged breaths. The air was foul and stiff and thick, but she’d keep breathing it if it meant that she kept breathing at all.

Then again, it had gotten a great deal harder to do that once they had taken away the light.

That had happened a few days ago. The newest shipment of four had arrived, screaming and pleading and begging their captors. Confused and scared, searching out the others for help that could not be provided. There had been sympathy, of course. She’d looked at the others the same way. But that had been too long ago. Or maybe less. She hadn’t been sure.

There had been holes in the ceiling. Glorious, beautiful gaps in the security that let in shafts of perfect sun. None of them had cared about looking weak. They were Fairies, and they craved what they needed as they always would. Pressing themselves against bars, reaching for tiny shards enough to cut beautiful burning gold into their fingers and boil their blood with magma kisses. Pleading to be let outside, that they’d stay silent, stay good, stay still  _if you just let us outside, please_!

Their cries had been too loud. And no amount of beatings had stopped them from reaching for the ethereal.

The next day, their light had been gone- a rock shifted atop gaping wounds in the earth, turning their world to pitch.

She let out another pitiful sniffle, blinking through the darkness, making out only a few stray shadows. The cages around her swung gently, dark masses resembling the monsters in storybooks with their witchey hooked noses and gnarled fingers. She shifted and a thorn dug into her skin.

“Stop crying!” The speaker had been there the longest. Linnea knew him from when she’d been dragged through, and from what the others said, it was the same. An older gentleman and a cynic, Barrow something or other was his name she recalled him boasting, he tended to spew insults and hysterical laughs through foul breath and teeth rotted through from tobacco and gin. “It isn’t gonna help anyone! ‘Specially not you!”

The victim of his assaults had changed from day to day. And his newest choice, a small boy in a cell hanging a little ways down from her own, merely cried harder at the old mans words. She rubbed a hand down her face barely able to contain a scream that had been building up for some time.

“ _Did you hear me, Boy? I said shuddup_.”

“Stop it, Barrow.” She snapped.  _Oh skies_ but they didn’t need anyone more scared than they already were. A breeze, cold from its travels underground, caressed her shoulders and she felt the hairs at her arm raise, gritting her teeth against the cold. Fairies were meant to endure that as much as they were meant to endure the dark. She tugged at her dress, trying to pull it farther down her legs but it was too shredded to give any warmth. Still, she gave it another pull across her skin, the stale fabric scraping where it touched with exhausted breaths. Layered petals, white hyacinths that looked more brown then pearl now, bunched between her fingers and glowed faintly, the veins creased in telltale abuse. 

“I thought i told ya ta shaddup, boy. Cryin’ isn’ gonna do anything, now is it! They’re gonna do what they want to kiddies they find anyway!”

“Barrow, _I’m warning you_ -”

He snorted. “You’ll do what? Hop through those bars and shut me up?” He barked a crazed laugh that sounded like too much darkness and smoke. “If ya could have done that, ya could have saved the whelp from being next on their table!”

“ _What_!” The boy shrieked. “What does that-”

“Don’t listen to him, sweetie. He… he doesn’t know why we’re here either.”

“Sure I do. Same thing Goblin’s always want. We’re a delicacy to them. They’ll tear open our skin like berries and crunch on our skulls!”

The boy burst into tears again, the chains holding his cage up trembling with every quake of his body. “ _I_ -I  _d_ -don’t  _wuh-wuh_ -want them to  _e_ -eat  _m-m-_ me!”

“Well, should’a thought about that before you got caught then.”

“Stop it!” The man snorted. The boy cried. Linnea turned round in her cell, seeking out the voices. “Gods, you need to stop! Can’t you see it’s not helping anyone!”

“No one likes to be lied to, little missy.”

“My name is  _Linnea_.”

“As if I care, girl!”

“Linnea. And I care.” For she had to care. Between the darkness and the cages and the screams, there was only so much she could hold onto that was hers alone.

 _Fey, it, you, that, them_ \- those who had taken and kept them had found every word to use but names. If they were so reluctant, then she’d fight to remember her own.

 _Names have power_ , her nana had told her once, sitting round the fire throwing kindling into the awaiting belly of embers.  _Don’t let someone take yers. Protect it at all costs. You hear me, Linnea. Protect your name_.

“Besides,” she shook herself out of her stupor to glare at the man below, merely a shadow in the dark. “You should care. You’re in this too, you know.”

“Yeah. But at least I’m not a  _liar_ , girl.”

“ _Linnea_ ,” she retorted sharply. “And… and what if I’m not lying then. What if… what if I know that everything’ll be okay.”

There was a round of chatter at that. A few hopeful moans and another few scornful huffs of those who had long ago lost their faith- forlorn but reasonable. The boy beneath her, however, seemed to take something from it, and she heard him choke, saw the shadow of him wipe an arm across his nose. “… really?” He asked. “You think?”

“We’ll find a way out” She tried her best to offer an unseen smile through the gloom. Perhaps the dark had its perks. No one could see how terribly she was shaking. “We’ll… we just have to wait. Someone will save us and-”

“Someone will save us!” The barking laugh had no humor and the anger between every staccato burst was cutting. One of the women trapped in a cage. From where she was, Linnea could see the chains holding it to the ceiling begin to swing in her burst. “Someone will save us!” she called again, panic hooking its claws deep. “That’s your great hopeful scheme! No escape! No fight! Just someone will save us!” The woman cackled high and loud, matching that of the man who had taken to muttering sad realities beneath his breath. “It’s been days. No one is coming. That gentleman was right in what he said, boy. We’re all going to die here.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Then what am I s’possed to say!” The woman’s voice was getting higher in her hysteria and the echoes it left behind were almost deafening. “You- you saw them all leave! They took them! They bring them out and then-”

“Stop it!” She was shaking too, and tears were springing hot into her eyes. But she couldn’t let her see that. Not now. “Stop that! For all we know they all… got to go home! Maybe…” she swallowed thickly. “Maybe we… we did something. Maybe we’re just being… being held here. Until they let us go!”

To her right in another cage there was the beginnings of the softest crying. “I… I didn’t do anything…” The Fairy, a young man from the sound of his voice, hiccuped miserably. “I didn’t! I-I didn’t mean to! I d-didn’t e-even touch a p-primrose!”

“That’s because none of us did. They’re just going to take us all and none of us are going home. Ever.”

The young man’s tearful gasps got louder.

“Stop it!” Linna held back another cry, slapping the bars pitifully. “Stop it now!”

“They’re going to kill everyone!” The man wailed, followed by the woman’s shout of “we’re gonna die! We’re all gonna die!”

A crescendo of noise, cut open with a little boys tears, filled the cavern. She had to duck away, cover her ears, try to pretend that she had the sun and the wind and the air and not the darkness and all the noise of the broken and the hurt. Her breath was tight and her eyes were shut and there was nothing but an endless stream of hopelessness that was winding round her neck like a noose. Tighter and tighter and tighter, she was being wound up until finally, with a bang of a fist too weak to do much of anything, she couldn’t take it any longer.

“SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU!  _SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP **SHUT UP**_!”

And for a moment everything did stop. The cries and the wails and the tears and the hysterical predictions coming to a halt, all to listen to Linnea, swinging in their cages, the chains squeaking through the rust and clacking when metal gently kissed.

She took a breath. A deep, shivering breath. She couldn’t stop the tears if she had wanted to. She was meant to be strong, especially now, but when the silence took over and everyone looked through the darkness at her, eyes shimmering with hope, it was overwhelming. Her chest stung, and the first few tears, dripping down her cheeks, hit her lip and she tasted salt and grime. 

“Linnea?” The little boy’s voice broke through the sound of her breath at her ears. “Are we… are we going to be okay?”

She took another deep breath. “… I- I… I don’t know…”

“I just want my mommy.” He sunk lower, blinking doe eyes at the ceiling, a finality in the tone that had no place in a child’s voice. “Will we… will I get to see her again?”

Another tear slipped between her lips and her tongue darted out. Hands turning to fists, she grimaced at the pain that was almost reassuring when nails pricked the rough calluses forming across the heel or her hand. “I think… I think we’ll be-”

“Don’t lie.” There was something off about his voice. A cruelty that resided without eviction never failed to weave a shroud through his teeth. But something else was beginning to join in. Defeat was such a taciturn thing really. He slid down the side of his own cage, eyes buzzed with past drink and sorrow. “Please don’t lie to us.”

“Barrow, you know I-

“No. I can’t do it anymore.” Waving his hands round his head he made a choking noise in the back of his throat. “An’ you shouldn’t give the boy that kind of hope. Not like this.” The boy looked between both of them, his lip beginning to tremble.

“I’m not!” Her plea was quiet, reserved, and she wasn’t sure who she was trying to reassure anymore. “What if… what if I’m  _not_? What if everything’s going to be okay. What if-”

“Nothing’s gonna be okay, girl. Not ever again. Not after this.”

“But what if-”

The dungeon door slamming open cut off whatever she was about to say. The flood of light revealed Fairies, colored wings shimmering like fire, swiping the air to fly into a skyless abandon. Scuttling backward before launching themselves towards the sunlight, reaching out with hungry fingers, pleading and begging, sobbing into deaf ears to be released. The sound of talking, boisterous and loud -an argument, maybe- slithered through.

“What’s going on!” A girl from a few cages over leaned against the bars of her cell, thorns pricking her cheek. “Who’s coming in!”

She looked down, watching the shadows extending. “… I don’t know.”

A buzz erupted throughout the cavern, chittering, nervous and scared. Words thrown this way and that -who’s next- followed by the sobs of those who had predicted themselves doomed from the start. A fairy below tugged at the bindings on her wings, tiny whines of pain pushing between thinly drawn lips. She’d been one of the ones that had tried to fly, tried to escape. And still then she tried, nails digging below every sheen strand, her movements erratic and hysterical. Trying to free herself in an effort that was pitiful in its inevitable outcome. Someone far off began to pray.  _Not me, not me, oh dear skies please, not me._

It was then that they arrived.

“A’right, Fey!  _On yer feet_!” They walked like the world was made for predators, slipping through air with grace that couldn’t have been expected, their bodies shifting bonelessly through darkened patches, scaring the shadows that were pulled on chains behind them. One leaned over slamming thick fists against the cells, the clip clip clip of claws across bars snapping all to a flurry of attention.

“Please!” A Fairy shot across the cage, fists curling round steel. “Please! They took my son! I just- someone- please let him know-” she shrieked as one let out a magnificent roar, charging the cell. His hands fell upon it and the structure tolled a religious hymn of rattling chains and fearful shrieks leaving the mother of a lost boy to clutch at her chest, tears welling silent and still.

The jailers had been the only other things they’d seen since they arrived. Two of them in total. Goblins of more than adequate size and stature. They had always been the ones to greet the Fairies after a successful hunt.  _Hello there, love_ , Linnea could still remember them saying after she’d tumbled out of the bag into her house of steel.  _Welcome to your new home._  And so it had been ever since.

“Get up, all a’ you!” The smaller of the two rattled a few cages, smirking rows of greenish fangs at every victim as he passed. “One’a you lucky ‘uns is gonna get ta go outside today!”

It was all that they could do not to beg to be that person. For as much as sunlight was an aching need, no one had yet returned from one of the famous and much feared ‘travels to the outside’. And they had seen them go. First it had been a younger girl, trembling in a torn dress, her golden hair framing a halo round her head in an irony almost too cruel to mention. And then it had been an older woman who had been dragged in from where she’d been finding herbs for her sick child beneath the primroses. And then a man, a woman, a man, a woman, again and again and again they came and went, dragged from wire stables out into a place as much sunlight as it was darkness, torn away from nightmares and delivered into unknown.

“Alright!” The larger of the two rounded cages, eyeing Fairies up and down, watching with a cruel glimmer as most tucked themselves away between the folds of colorful tapestries, shivering like leaves waiting to be crunched underfoot. “Who’s it gonna be.”

“What about this one?” Linnea watched them carefully. Saw one of them point to a cage, a smaller Fey bent at the middle, hands over their head. The other just shook his head.

“ _Sickly_.”

“What about-”

“The wings ain’t bright enough. Ya know what happened last time, idiot. Unless you wanna be tossed away with’em.”

“Then what about…” he hummed, a guttural sound from somewhere deep in his bulging gullet. His eyes lit up at a cage and his finger jabbed the air. “What about this’un?”

She craned her neck, trying her best to see where the creatures might have been pointing. Squinting through the silhouetted darkness to try and find out what they were seeing.

“Strong, young… bright wings…” Not even waiting for his partners response he jerked open the cage, reaching in, ignoring the sounds of whimpering shrieks. “I mean, look at it. It ain’t gonna put up any fight.” And with that he drew out-

“HEY!  **NO**!” Whatever came over her, it certainly couldn’t have been the Linnea that she knew. Because that Linnea was shy and quiet and not sure of her place anywhere. That Linnea just wanted to go home and curl up next to her fireplace and cry for days for she had seen things and known things that she never wanted to have witnessed. That Linnea did not shout at jailors when they chose someone to take away because there was no way to fight and flesh was too think to risk betting lives on.

But that Linnea had not been in control when they had begun to take the little crying boy with the hope and a mother from his cage.

“ _WHO SAID THAT_.” It was a small miracle she supposed that at least the boy had been let go at least, the door of the cage once more slamming shut. The boy was quick to move back, curling into himself against the side of the cage, letting out tiny whines that might have been his mothers name. Something squeezed at her chest, terrible and furious and protective, and she wanted nothing more than to wind her fingers through his and promise once more than everything would be alright.

But now there attention was elsewhere, and that was where it would become dangerous. No protection could be offered. No hands could be held. No promises could be kept. Not anymore. She slid away again, mouth pressing shut. “WELL?” One of them shouted again, snarling against the sudden stillness. “Who said it!”

No one moved. 

No one breathed. 

From far off she heard the faint beginnings of another prayer.

The larger of the two growled, fist jerking out to slam against the bars of another cage, sending it swinging, the poor Fey inside ducking beneath the cover of her wings, sobbing harder than before. “Tell us. Now. Or ya all leave.”

“And b’lieve us when we say that none’a you are gonna be comin’ back.” 

 _Please don’t see me_ , closing her eyes from the world, sinking away from the darkness. _Oh dear skies, please don’t see me. Please don’t see me. Please don’t-_

“It was that one up there.”

She jerked up, eyes huge. Looking through the bars, she searched out the familiar voice. It had come like the worst of warnings. Pleasantries before the light night strikes. A gentle caress of wind belonging to a hurricane that follows lovingly in tow. She searched out the storm that was set to find it’s place of destruction. 

When she found the eyes of her destruction, she had to do her best not to beat her fists against the floor of the cage.

The Cynic looked back at her. It was only a moment, but their eyes connected. Through the rusted steel, backed by an odd flood of light from the still open door, dark eyes flashed beneath a hooded brow at her, and she looked back, captivated in their devious message. And then he smiled a poisonous sort of smile, lips pulling back in a snarl. “Her.” he jabbed his finger, breaking through the air. “She’s tha one ya want.”

The man was a coward and a traitor, and she could almost read the message in his eyes when he leered up at her.  _Shows you what being hopeful does, Love. You spark a light, you start a fire._  Her mouth opened, closed, opened again.

 _Why_! She wanted to ask.  _Why would you ever-_

There was no time to ask. Not when their gazes had turned onto her.

_Oh no._

“That little whelp?” One moved towards the cell, leaning down to eye her with something as close to hunger as she cared to imagine. “Courageous little Fey, ain’t she?”

“Courageous…” the other followed, tilting its head with a smile to boil sugar. “Or  _stupid_.”

“I…” she wanted to move, breathe, speak, but she didn’t dare move. There was no way out anyway, and her prison of too long was beginning to seem ironic in its protection. “I  _didn’t_ … I  _just_ \- I-”

They didn’t care to hear what she had to say. Not that they would have. Their eyes never straying one instant, they instead struck up a new and far more horrifying idea to rival her own. “This Fey looks healthy enough.” The larger Goblin cocked its head, gnashing fangs in thought.

_Oh no, oh no. Please, no._

She wasn’t ready for this. She’d never truly been ready. Though who was. This place of darkness, so long had it been her temple and home, entrapping her in a silent madness that built up until it nearly popped. She had wished for nothing more than to be rid of it. And now…

 _Give me the madness,_ she shut her eyes tight for only an instant so as not to lose what was left of her courage,

The smaller of the two, a hulking grey thing with eyes like pitch, oozed closer, surprisingly light on two bulky feet. Circling the cage, a growl deep in his chest smoothing out a single rhythm, he blinked down at the Fairy in the cage. She watched him careful, daring herself not to move. If she moved then she was a target. That was what her mother had always taught her. Goblins are always looking for a reason to chase. If you make the first move then you might as well be that reason. So she held her breath, watching and waiting.

“Seems strong ‘nuff,” the smaller one rumbled, leaning closer. His nostrils flared, and a gust of hot air hit her face. “New blood.”

“You, Fey,” she whipped her head round to look at the larger Goblin who had taken to leering at her, fangs bared, eyes squinted. “How long was it since ya got here?”

 _Linnea_ , she wanted to scream back.  _My name is Linnea. And I’ve been here for too long._  She shuddered, searching round her for any light, trying to remember in that moment what a sun even looked like. _Far too long._

“Oy! He asked a question, Fey!” A thick fist barreled into the side of the cage and she was thrown back into the bars with a shout. Her head slammed against metal and her teeth bit down hard enough on her lip to draw blood. She yelped, shivering, hunching forward to hide her face against her knees. _Please, oh god please just leave!_ “Hey!”

“Give ‘er a good knock, Trundle!” She heard the sounds of keys being snatched back and forth, pushing against the bottom of the cage to get further away.

“No.” Eyes wide and pleading. The imprints of hands at her back burned. “Please- I-  _I just want to go home_!”

“I wanna tug ‘er arms off!”

“No! Her legs!”

“ _Please_! I’ll- I’m sorry! Please I never-” The keys slammed into the lock and she shot back with a screech to tear through her throat once more, pushing her body as far as it could go in the space, pleading against the hands that reached towards her-

“TRUNDLE. GRUDER.”

Their grip on her slacked just enough to wiggle but not enough to pull away, and she blinked through the lukewarm dark to watch for their next move. 

“I leave you alone for a few minutes and I find  _this_  on my return?”

If their jailers were anything to fear, then the warden was something else entirely. 

A larger Goblin, grey as a storm with a smile to match, he towered over all without stature or size. Huge in form, bigger in presence, he slunk round the cages day and night with a smile of sugared sin and an eye that sent stomachs turning with the lust it exuded. 

The smile was back then, slipping quietly into place, drawing back to show fangs that glinted hideously under light that shuddered beneath their sheen. “ _What_  do you think you’re doing?”

“Eatin’ a Fey, sir.”

They said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. One tugged at her ankle and on instinct she reached out to grab a thorned bar, holding on for what life she had left. One of the spokes cut the side of her hand, and she felt blood well up into her palm. 

“She disrespected us, sir.” The other, Gruder, licked his lips, blinking hungrily at her. 

“Gentleman,  _please_ , release the Fey.”

“But  _sir_ -”

“Do you wish to end up with one of them? Or do you want to  _stick to the plan_ and  _not_  find yourselves locked ‘way.” The eyes, always gleaning, turned their lustful gaze on her for a fraction of a second and she held tighter to the bars. “Let it go.  _Now_.” 

Their scowls were deep, but they did as they were told, grudgingly pulling their arms back. She hardly relaxed, and every breath she took was a wild pant- a sprint that burned her chest and ate away at her lungs until they might have seared a hole through her chest. Legs curled up as close as they could, trying to get out of the way.

The Warden peered into the cage. “This one isn’t food to be sure.” He squinted, tilting a bulbous head. “ _Ugly_  blue wings though. Bright. But  _ugly_. Gentlemen I thought I explained it to you already. No more blue. They’re of little use unless they’re  _hers_.”

"Sorry boss,” Gruder skritched the back of his neck bashfully. “ A'like blue…”

The Warden rolled piggish black eyes, but didn’t breach the subject any longer than that. “ That aside, there’s still potential. Take it out then, won’t you gentleman?  _But please refrain for harming it_. We don’t need _another_  accident.” 

She curled her feet closer, but they got her anyway, dragging her out without much protest. She didn’t scream, didn’t try to pull away. There was hardly any point anymore. Too many before had done their best and fought with the courage that she’d be proud to possess. But they had found themselves in places that she had no desire of, and so her pride swallowed back and her honor buried deep, she accepted her fate for the hope of something foolishly optimistic. 

Hands were at her before she’d even been taken out of her prison, prodding and poking at her back, grabbing shoulders when she squirmed. One carded through her hair hard enough to pull out handfuls, humming something about texture.

“She’ll do fine.” The Warden grabbed the base of her wings, tugging, testing, murmuring. “And these seem good. Sturdy. Fresh.”

“She’s a young’un, sir,” Trundle grabbed her face, turning it side to side. She closed her eyes, doing her best to envision flowers and brooks and castles of stone. “Most’a their wings are.”

“The last two you brought were cut up,” the Warden snarled back, stroking down the base of one veined appendage, grimy hands passing far too close to her skin for any comfort, one large finger just brushing across her waist. She squirmed to get away but their grip was a vice. “An accident, I’d assume?”

“‘Course, sir. They just… fell…”

“So did the other four.”

“What can I say, sir. Fairies are clumsy things.” She shuddered when one of them let out a coughing laugh filled with ages of smoke and the stench of cheap liquor. The Warden hummed, tugging her wing again, stretching them out to their full span.

“It’ll do.” he said, after a moment, letting her skies drop to the floor. “Bind it. Can’t have anything happening until we get the word. And whatever you do, gentleman, keep the wings in tact this time.”

“No! You can’t- I need to have- _ah_!” The sharp snap of a hand against her face sent the world into a tailspin, and she nearly fell to the group before being caught. Fingerprints found their home against her skin once more, bruising with such force that almost forgot how to breathe, lungs spasming, searching out air that wouldn’t come. And when it did it took far too many breaths to remind herself that she was alive.

And that, just maybe, she didn’t want to be anymore.

The ropes that were tied round her wrists helped a little with that. And so did the sting at her face. And the hopelessness as they lead her out.

But perhaps, most of all, it was the old Cynic’s look as she passed his cage.

“ _You played with fire when you lied about the matches_ ,” he murmured, leaning back in an acceptance that was far too knowledgeable to be anything but forlorn. “ _Good luck, girl._ ”

 _Linnea_ … her mind whimpered back. But even then it was unsure and the beginnings of doubt when her name rocked through her brain, staring at the man before her -… _Linnea_ … _-_ were the most terrifying thing of all. 

Somewhere in the background she heard the warden begin his rounds again.

The boy that had been meant to go called out a desperate, whispered thanks.

The light nearing her was her final hope, it would seem, nearly blinding in its newness. And she could have sobbed in joyful ending, holding back tears for fearing of missing ever last moment when the perfect and wonderful rays. She cried anyway. When the blindfold found its home, tugging across hard enough to see spots, it was hard not to. So she did cry. As the sun warmed her face and the darkness went on forever, she cried until she felt her knees begin to give.

There was a fist at her back and she stumbled, doing her best to stay on two feet. “Move it, Fey.” So she picked herself up and kept moving, dried salt beginning to itch at her cheeks and the skin at her knees stinging from the fall. She kept moving through a place she hardly knew to a fate she couldn’t know, hoping with every fiber in her body that whatever was to happen would end her.

She was done hoping.

He’d been right. Lies were useless. Especially when you had to lie to yourself.

* * *

 _Will she be back?_ A boy asked, watching a Goblin prowl cells, shivering in the drafts that passed through.  _Do you think_ -

The Warden said something about quiet, and they all fell into it, hunching down beneath their wings, trying to become as invisible as the tapestries would allow. The boy’s forehead fell to his knees. 

 _Boy_? A Cynic called, softly so as not to disturb a dragon. The boy looked up. Waited. Hoped.  _She’s as good as gone, boy_.  _We all are._

The boy began to cry just as the warden made his way over, screaming something about a silence that had no room for tears.

* * *

She’d never truly known cold because there had never not been a sun.

The open fields of the Fairy Kingdom were places of energy and life, capturing warmth and storing it away- a stern warden if there ever was one. Of course there was a moon. And nights shifted with breezes that smelled of daffodils and lilac, the brooks that ran their leisurely ways, slicing the land through its open palm, helped to nip at the candles and frost the grass. But then the sun was back and the earth was once more warm and everything was beautiful.

She had never not known the sun.

And then, just like that, the sun was gone.

“Move, Fairy.” Her palms hit the ground first at the push, gravel piercing easily and digging into her fingers and calves. Her back stung from where they’d struck her and the sudden movement had her retching. There wasn’t any sympathy, and by now she didn’t expect it. Another set of hands curved beneath her arms and wrenched her up and she stumbled forward after another winding slap against her spine. 

They’d been walking what had seemed like forever. 

The ground had changed too many times. From stones to sticks to roots, it had turned into something like gravel beneath her feet. A walkway, maybe. 

When the growls began, sounds round her that signified a lack of solitude, she nearly fell back. They gave another push, urging her forward.

“ _Too many in one week_ ,” something snarled by her, and she cowered for a moment, wanting nothing more than to take off the blindfold right then and there. “ _He won’t be happy_.”

“Just let us in, Brutus.”

“ _You’re making a mistake_.”

“D’you wanna deal with him?”

A pause. “…  _I ain’t stoppin’ you_.” Whoever he was, he was huge, voice following a steep path down to reach the small creature before him. “But this ain’t her.”

“Ya think we don’t know that? It doesn’t matter. Long as-”

“Long as you get what ya need.” There was defense there- a loyalty that was never meant to be tested. A sort of anger that wasn’t meant for her. For the first time in what must have been days, she wasn’t the subject of hatred. “King’s gettin’ harder ta trick. This ain’t gonna cut it.”

“We just need ta see the King, Brutus. Of course… if  _you_  wanna tell ‘im this ain’t her, then by all means…”

Another long silence filled the space between them. In the distance a squabble between two Goblins had started. Mushrooms whispered a hypnotic tune. She wanted to reach out then. Wanted to try and call out. _Who’s her_? She wanted to scream.  _I’m not anyone! I’m Linnea! Help me, please! I’m just Linnea!_

She’d never get the chance. It would appear that the monsters sympathies lay elsewhere, and his duty was to be fulfilled.

“Go.” He said, his feet scuffing the ground when he moved out of their way. “it’ll be you next week anyways.”

“Keep hoping.”

And with that, they moved again, allowed through, past the monsters who murmured softly in words that she could almost make out - _another… different… poor thing… he’ll take… poor, poor thing…_  falling back into a pace fast enough to escape the eyes she could feel against her neck.. 

“ _Please_ …” she remembered saying at one point, a useless word by then but still her most fluent. “ _Please_ … where… where are we?”

They didn’t answer, dragging her through hallway after hallway. The world smelled less like outdoors and more like rotting pine and turned earth. Farther and farther, one after the other, she was pushed and prodded and poked across a darkness that would never end. Her wings twitched - _a useless effort if they were inside like she suspected_ \- but they still let out a fearsome trumpeting bellow, tugging them back down, snarling something in an old tongue that had her shivering back into step. 

And then they stopped. 

Hands fell to her shoulders, rancid breath passing her face, ruffling the stray hairs by her ear. She was pressed down onto the rough floors, petrified wood setting imprints into the skin scratched raw. One of them growled a word, and she heard someone scamper away. Heavy doors closed. Her breathing quickened. Trapped. They were trapped. She was trapped. 

The blindfold stung against her skin. The shackles at her wrists burned. 

Thick fingers wound their way into her hair, tugging her head up, and she yelped. Someone hissed into her ear. “ _Quiet, Fey. Respect yer King_.”

Her forehead bundled.  _King…_

“Greetings, highness!” The slippery tongue was about as regal as pond scum. One of them pushed her down into an awkward bow to follow suit in their actions. “We bring you another, sire!”

There was a twitching noise. A guttural scrape. Her throat stalled. 

Where had they brought her?  _Or_ , she swallowed back a lump lodged deep in her chest,  _what had they brought her to?_

“Is this her, your highness?”

 _Your highness_ …

Through the darkness of whatever bound her eyes she heard a new sound. A rattling. Blurred hissing in elegant and hushed chaos. A buzz of wings cutting air, and the light snips of clawed feet hitting ground, walking towards her. Her breath pitched, struggling back away from whatever thing was nearing, but her captors held tight. “ _No… no… no_!” Her whispered attempts at redemption didn’t receive any form of pity as the thing drew nearer. 

“She’s a feisty one, sire.”

“But we got ‘er good.”

She tried once more to struggle away, but they were insistent in their strength. The thing was nearer. Ticking the floor like a spider across smooth rock, it drew its way across the ground. There was another buzzing sound, closer this time.

And then claws had grasped her face.

Linnea shot back, a scream arching from abused lungs, but the talons caught her before she could. Pricking against skin she felt the blood pooling hot and certain and she gasped hard against the rough palm. “Struggle an’ it’ll be worse for ye.” it said, and with needles piercing through flesh, it stole the remaining cry from her body.

It was a new voice, unlike the ones that had plagued the darkness from before. Regal, dark, it sneered every syllable between bared teeth and slipped out meaning beneath hissing breaths. “I have little patience, Fey, an’ this won’t do ye any favors. Be still.” Bitter, rough, it reminded her of the fraying bark off of the trees against the horizon, a burning sort of anger tousled into every vowel. She opened her mouth to scream again, but the claws settled in their place and she stopped.

A line of something warm dripped off her chin, hitting her splayed hand below. Her mouth, still open, revealed only the barest of gasps.

“Good choice.” From behind her, her captors sniggered.

A rough thumb arched across the sharp lines of her cheeks. She’d always had fine bones. She’d gotten them from her mother- an envious beauty of much jealousy and fair face- and had always held them high for all the world to see. But that hardly mattered now. Not when she was coated with dust and dirt, blinded with rags and held like a doll in a place where she knew she’d never leave.

 _Your name is Linnea,_ she told herself again as the creature before her turned her head this way and that, twisting her neck until her shoulders strained and muscles threatened to pop. Another drop hit her finger and she wiggled them against the cold floor, daring herself to stay still.  _You’re name is Linnea. You’ve always been Linnea. You’ll always be Linnea._

The pressure released when the creature let out a frustrated growl. “This isn’t Plum,” he rumbled. “That’s not her,” the rumbling voice protruded from the dark, and talons extracted themselves from skin stretched tight after too many days without seeing the sun. Without seeing anything. She choked on the sudden flow of air, coughing out dust in droves. Another thread of blood slithered down her chin and pearled against her fingers, a flash of warmth after too long. She shuddered a breath, keeping back her whines. For now the attention was off of her, and that was where she needed it to stay. “Ye brought me one another Fey. That’s the eighth time this fortnight yee’ve failed.”

“Apologies, Sire! Truly. We… we weren’t sure-”

There was a guttural drag from somewhere deep in the Monster’s chest and another hot caress of wind burned her face. “I’d choose yer words  _wisely_ , _if I were ye_.”

She heard one of them swallow, the other scraping the floor with the back of his heel. “What… what should we do with ‘er then, Sire,” the other voices from behind her grew limbs when the hair was tugged and she was forced to look up once more, breathing pitched against dark infinite, neck tugged until even air became a luxury. She let out a coarse, low cry at the pressure, but that only made them give her locks another fierce pull and she silenced. “She’s still a Fey, sir. Shame ta waste, don’t ye think.”

 _Let me go home!_ She wanted to scream. But she was all cried out, and every tear had been lost once she’d been forgotten beneath the cries of so many others.  _Please. Please just let me go home._

“I have the wings I need fer the time being.”

“We’re running short, highness.”

“ _What_!  _How can you be_ -” Segments were hissing and biting once more, and she heard the skittering of claws in a foul chorus of teeth. The hands at her hair tightened, dragging her with a stinging intent, when her captors jerked back and she bit her lip from screaming. The taste of copper filled her mouth and she gagged through the union of blood and pain. “They said they’d have it ready!” the creature roared. “I got them the wings they needed, an’ they haven’ figured out the bloody solution!”

“Please, sire! The alchemists can only work so fast!”

“Then save her fer that! Ah duin much care what ye dui!” The lilting creature snarled, and scorching breath sent her hair along her neck into a standing ovation. “But know that ye  _greatly_  disappoint.”

“Of course, sire.”

“…What should we do with her then, Sire?” the other asked after a moment, presenting her forward like a prized sapling for the kindling.

 _Let me go home! Please! My name is Linnea. I’ve always been Linnea and I’ll always be Linnea and I want to go home!_ The words never came. Which was fitting, as he spoke for her.

“Do what you will.” the voice above her snarled, and her hair fluttered under the scorching growls. “But find me Plum or find me a potion. So help me, ye’ll find yerselves locked up with the rest of them if ye can’t. But unlike yer mercies, I’ll be  _personally_  dealing with ye.”

“We’ll do our best!” Trundle backed away a step, his attempt at casualties betrayed by the tick in his voice. “ _Truly_  sire, next time-

“ _Next time_  yee’ll do more than that.  _Yee’ll find ‘er_. It’ll do you good to remember who your King is an’ what ah can dui. Ye could very quickly find yourself cellmates with all yer other mistaken identities.”

“But sire-!”

“ _Sire,_ really-!”

“ _Take her away_!” There was a rattling, a hissing, a shifting, the clacking of teeth pressing together into a fearsome snarl startling the two lackeys backward, their grip slipping. “B’fore I find somethin’ ta do with ‘er mahself!”

“ **No!** ” Their panic had given her enough room to move, and without second thought or idea or state of mind, she broke out, hurling herself forward. There wasn’t time to rip off a blindfold. No time to scrabble with the bonds at her hands. Just time enough to move towards her last hope. For even Monsters have mercy and she knew enough by now to know that luck was all she had left. “I  _can’t_! _Please_ there’s no light and I need-  _please_ -” And there was one moment, one glorious moment, where she was free, her wings singing in relief, face hitting cool air, dashing towards the Monster of the darkness and falling onto already skinned knees.

“We didn’t do  _anything_!” she reached for him with bound hands, fingers splaying boldly across the ground, her bow one of pure submission beneath his feet. She touched something cool and dry and scaled, a leg perhaps, and did her best to find a grip. A sound of disgust and alarm, the two behind scrambling for an excuse. But she continued. For if there was nothing else but this, then let this be what fulfilled false promises. “There’s-  _there’s so many of us down there! And it’s dark and cold and- and-_   _Please! I_  never- I never did anything! They took me and-  _I just want light and there’s a little boy-_ ”

“ _Control yee’er things, ye fools!”_

“Majesty this’s never-”

“ _Please_!” She screamed through their voices. “ _We just want to know… want to know why! Why are we down- why- why are you doing this to u_ - **ahh**!” The shock of claws on her neck, pushing her back into arms that grabbed her with enough force to break. She let out a wail, a plead for mercy, “ _Please!_   _I don’t want to d-_ ”

“ ** _Enough_**!”

The room went silent. Enough for her to hear only the furious breaths of the Monster by her ear drowning out her pulse and her own ragged pants suffocating the room. Nails dug into the spaces beneath her ears, a palm scraping the thin column of her neck. And for more than just one moment all was still and quiet and unmoving. 

He was the first to speak, and when he did it was in the softest of thunders. “Take the Fey,” he hissed. “An’ when ye make a potion out’a this one, Ah want it corked an’ put on mah mantle.”

She didn’t have time to scream before there was a flurry of breezes and the sounds of crunching leaves and just like that, the creature was gone, leaving only the smell of rotting earth and moss behind. 

“That’s it then.”

“S’pose so.”

“We’ll bring an’other in a few days. Until then…”

She heaved a sob, brow moving to rest on the floor in a grief that she could hardly believe. The two behind her continued to speak, but she didn’t care to hear. The ground was cool and the heaviness of it all was crushing deliciously down upon her. That had been it then. 

 _We’ll be fine_ , she had told a child that morning.  _Maybe we just did something wrong_.

But she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Snatched from the shallow grasses by Goblins hiding in the shadows, she’d been taken without reason, without explanation, without any hope of returning. Dragged through the thicket of a place she was never meant to go, where Kingdom and it’s rulers had warned of its dangers, there hadn’t been a moment to breathe and wonder  _why_.

She had spent so much time trying to think of an answer.

And as she lay in the dirt all she could think of was what she should have told that boy.  _There is no reason why. There’s never been a reason. This is just how it is. Because we were never strong enough and giving up was never an option. It was a demand. They’ll take because they can and we’ll give because we must and the sun will rise in the morning and you’ll never get to see it. And you’ll still never know why._

They didn’t allow her to mourn her life for long as her wardens were soon lifting her to her feet with force enough to strain muscle, and, still blind to the world, move back to a place she knew too well.

The walk back was a funeral march.

Perhaps she could have run. But her hands were bound and her captors were cruel and there was a chance that she wouldn’t make it five steps before she’d be worse off than before. Though truly, when the screams of children reached her through slatted bars and the wings were sent out in droves, still bloodied from where they’d been forcibly borrowed, perhaps she wanted whatever would come to her if she just stopped fighting and waited for an end.

“Move it, Fey.” A blow to her spine sent her stumbling with a choked gurgle. Righting herself, she forced her tired feet to go faster, sightlessly moving back into a world where even the sun daren’t try to lend its warmth.

Linnea had always been taught in the past that when the Monster was vanquished the story was over. There was only ever one Monster, after all, and he was fearsome and cruel as any could be. The evil of all evils meant to set the world aflame and watch it burn. And then he left and the embers cooled and all was right again.

She fell to the forest floor, wanting nothing more than to wish she didn’t want to die.

But it wasn’t right. Not when she was tugged from the ground with hands fast enough to break bone, her shriek settling with another rough threat, and forced back into a world that she didn’t know. There were too many Monsters here, and the fire had long settled into coals that would scorch her until she’d be nothing but ashes. And as she was pushed forward, tripping over another root and falling to her knees only to be lifted up again forced forward, she wished that that day would come sooner.

“Faster, Fairy.”

“Ya think it’ll fit in a cell with the others.”

“There’ll be dealers coming t’day ta buy wings. There’ll be room.”

“Ya think someone’ll notice they’re all gone though…?”

There was a snort. “Missing  _this_  thing? They’re just Fey, Trundle. The only thing they miss’s their r’flection.”

 _Your name is Linnea_ , she told herself over their throaty guffaws, tears soaking through her blindfold, salt burning the edges of fresh cuts. She’d hope until the world collapsed. She’d always hope. But at that moment, there was only one thing left for her to hold and it was slipping too fast to catch.

Until even her name was gone, she’d keep hoping. 

_You’re Linnea, you’ve always been Linnea, and you’ll always be Linnea._

But as it was with all of them, after they’d been in the cages, swinging against cool drafts in the freezing dark for too long to remember anything, Linnea disappeared into a shell that wished she could be nothing at all.


End file.
